-there ought to be more to write about than the weather, and there is: a Hell's Angel member in Melbourne shot and killed a Good Samaratin who was attempting to stop him dragging a stripper into his car, this at 8 in the morning, refuelling the debate over whether police should crack down on "bikie gangs," as they're called here, and further tighten firearms laws; the Coalition is slowly gaining ground on Labour as it continues to crib Labour's popular proposals, etc. etc. But it's the weather that's making the news.

We awoke this morning to a radio report that the Great Western Highway had been "blocked" by about 6 inches of snow at Wentworth Falls, about 10 km east, and was similarly impassable west of here. School principals were advising parents to think about safety before sending their children off .... But from here, it's a bit of a non-event. However, the cyclone-force winds and torrential rains along the coast really made the news. Sydney has been swamped with more than 450 mm. of rain this month -- now it's the wettest June since 1950. And the freighter on the beach at Newcastle (photo on June 9) is still there, as the weather's been too rough to commence the salvage operation.

Weird weather. We've had 340 mm. of rain in the past 12 days. That's 1/4 of our annual dose.

Christine's sister Caroline sent along a Powerpoint slide show (a .pps file, 1.8 mb) of the storm damage at Newcastle. The freighter pictures at the end are spectactular. Hope it works on your computer!
 

The storm has become worse during the day, not for us, but 100 km. away along the coast the situation is dire. Apparently the tanker will not break up, which is good news, but sections of the famous wine-growing Hunter Valley are being evacuated after, for example, 190 mm. of rain in Cessnock. Seven people are dead and one is missing, presumed dead, after washouts and flash floods.

Nevertheless, the TV newscasts contain more than weather disasters. Two items from the ABC:

-in the Top End, aka The Big Wet way up north in the tropics, cooler weather has caused the temporary cancellation of the "Beer for Toads" bounty campaign. Locals have been encouraged to capture the invasive, horrid cane toads and turn them in. The bounty is beer (I missed how many toads per stubby) or, if you're a child, a scoop of ice cream per toad. Next week, the item will be about obese children and drink-driving in the cane-toad areas of Northern Queensland.

-the passing of Lynne Rendell, the first teen pop star in Australia, was noted. Her breakthrough hit was "Ciao Baby" in 1967. "Never heard of her," muttered Christine, who left Australia for the first time in 1969. Rendell requested a party instead of a funeral.

Drove east from Melbourne, many of whose 4 million citizens live in dream homes, of red brick, picture window and staring red-tile roof on flat sterile block, that stretch forever into the eucalptus bush. Eventually arrived in the fertile Gippsland, a rolling landscape preoccupied with dairying, with the foothills of the Australian Alps standing to the north. Amazingly green after the autumn rains.

At the southeastern corner of the continent, bordering the Tasman Sea, the road descends to the coast through a series of sandbars and lakes where a relatively small river opens out to the Tasman Sea. Lakes Entrance is the fishing and tourist town that occupies the ocean shore; the main crop appears to be gummy shark, which is caught in the shallows and served with batter and chips at several shops along the Esplanade. We checked into a delightful motel on the narrow isthmus between lake and ocean beach, then went looking for a place to eat. The Bowls Club (i.e. lawn bowling) was the best choice, with "flake and chips" (i.e. shark) and $10/ carafe chardonnay in the dining room and adjoining rooms full of "pokies" (i.e. variations on slot machines and video gaming terminals) that occupied members and visitors both pre- and post-dinner, or instead of it perhaps. Thriving clubs like this are features of most country towns; most are RSL (i.e. returned servicemen's leagues, the same as the Legion), others are affiliated with supposedly non-profit enterprises like lawn bowling or rugby league. Most diners are really large, due to the really large dinners. Obesity is a problem throughout Australia, declining as one approaches the centres of cosmopolitan cities, as it is in North America.

It's dark and almost winter. The sidewalks are rolled up. We go back to the motel and turn on the TV, which comes on at Ten (one of 6 available channels), a program called Biggest Losers. Why are they losers? It's so hard to tell these days. Turns out it's two couples competing to see which can lose the most weight and win a $50,000 dream wedding. Was disappointed to see/hear that it was an American program from LA; figures. Nevertheless, thought it was morally uplifting and it could have been an Australian show, featuring younger versions of the people in the Bowls Club.

Next day drove north up the Princes Highway, back into New South Wales. The road stays a long distance inland and travels through forests and fields in a rather uninspiring way, looping occasionally out to the coast. Decided to cut inland and take the Snowy Mountains Highway directly to Canberra. We travelled through a landscape that could have been BC's interior -- very dramatic, dry and shivering in the twilight of the first day of winter, June 1st.

Canberra: art stop #2, for the landmark exhibition on Australian printmaking. We both noticed how many women artists were represented in the exhibition, compared with the Melbourne Impressionist one. Oil painting was a manly task, it seems, whereas many of the printmaking stars were women like Margaret Preston. Women learned to draw and paint watercolour, and some added the "accomplishment" of printmaking to their roster of talents. Saw a bumper sticker, "Real Men Don't Paint Watercolour," on the back of a ute out in the countryside, although I may have been mistaken.

And a final couple of photos that bracketed the trip. Australia has something of a reputation for installing huge roadside sculptures such as The Giant Pineapple at Coff's Harbour, big bananas and so on. Barry Humphries, better known to the world as Dame Edna Everage, wrote a book 25 years ago called "A Treasury of Australian Kitsch" which recorded a few of them. On a more serious (and annoyed) note, architect Robin Boyd wrote "The Great Australian Ugliness," concentrating on suburban design but making reference to roadside objects, too.